14 ms·

This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people. If he's looking for mega-good, Musk

by pnathan 10y ago

This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people. If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Musk might be able to drive some significant improvements there. No idea. But tunneling itself is not a reason to knock an idea beyond the cost and geoengineering involved.

naravara 10y ago
Hilariously so even. This is basically a subway system, except you have to provide your own seats. All this is succeeding in doing is making Musk look hilariously out of touch.
- wcr3 10y ago
  hilariously.
- stupidcar 10y ago
  He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical. On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and engineers with real knowledge and influence in this field, I'm astonished by the total lack of vision. Even in London, where you have a major, successful transport engineering project (Crossrail) completing, and an entire city dependency on, and supportive of, public transport, you only hear the most anemic plans for future expansion. For example, TFL is pushing a "New Tube For London" plan that consists of little more than trivial improvements. Some new trains, platform edge doors, etc., scheduled to be delivered in 2050 or so. But absolutely nothing with real ambition, like entirely new lines, that would actually solve London's insane congestion problems.
  - astrange 10y ago
    Opening new lines, like building new roads, might hurt everything due to induced demand. You can reduce demand by not needing everyone to go the same place every day. Why does everyone have to work in London and why don't they already live where they work?
    - Robotbeat 10y ago
      Induced demand means people are now able to practically get places when they couldn't before. It doesn't mean "hurt everything."
      - roywiggins 10y ago
        And more people moving more places means more growth, probably. If everyone stayed at home not much would get done.
  - osdiab 10y ago
    The problem is not that they cannot imagine the concept of adding new lines, it's just that the costs, both monetarily and politically for doing so, are enormous in the Western world. The eminent domain, permitting, and labor issues around these things paralyzes the development of cities, especially in the United States. If you want to see ambition in infrastructure, check out China. Being a technocracy bent on having world-class infrastructure, combined with the ability to remove people from their homes for the greater good with little repercussion, they've built some of the most thorough infrastructural improvements ever seen on the planet. For instance, the first line of the Shanghai Metro was opened in 1993; today, it is the longest metro in the world, with 14 lines. And this rapid growth can be seen not just in the megacities like Shanghai, but in countless smaller ones throughout the country—not to mention their incredible construction of their thorough long distance high speed rail network. And on top of that, since their system is so modern, the trains are a hell of a lot safer and more reliable than any piece of infrastructure in the USA. I think they've made mistakes with how car-oriented the streetscapes are, the generic architectural styles throughout that country, overbuilding before demand arises, and a lack of mixed-use neighborhood zoning, amongst other things; but when it comes to imagining an integrated, efficient commuter rail network, they've killed it.
    - linkregister 10y ago
      > the ability to remove people from their homes for the greater good with little repercussion I think you underestimate how poorly compensated the relocated people are. Unless it's an outcome of "Weird China" reporting, which is very possible, I've seen plenty of reports of people being forced out of their houses in exchange for flats with smaller floor space and property in an inferior location. I'm not saying what Chinese infrastructure officials isn't impressive. I'm just saying it has massive costs for the people being displaced.
      - EmployedRussian 10y ago
        I think you are in violent agreement with the parent post: "ability to remove people ... with little repercussion" literally means: they (authorities) can order people move, and it costs them (authorities) little or nothing at all. It costs the moved people a great deal, but the government doesn't care.
  - pnathan 10y ago
    paralysis via NIMBY is the key problem in the US. many urbanists would be happy to grid every city with subways. we talk about it, wistfully. but we don't have the political leverage today, and the little we have is with the Democrats, not the Republicans.
  - 6d6b73 10y ago
    "real solution" =! "it's impractical" Decide which one is it.
  - Anechoic 10y ago
    > He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical. He's proposing the transportation equivalent of a personal computer with perfect security, completely crash free, 1000x faster than current PCs that cost lesss tha. We have today. It's not impractical, it's laughable. > On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and engineers with real knowledge and influence in this field, I'm astonished by the total lack of vision. If you want to see total vision, come to a Transportation Research Board annual meeting. Or an APTA annual meeting. Visions are out there. The political support is not.
    - dirtyaura 10y ago
      Visions have to be shared with the public, make people excited about them, to get politicians to support them
  - tigershark 10y ago
    What? TfL has no ambitions? The crossrail is the biggest construction project in the whole Europe, and it is still not finished and they are already planning for the crossrail 2 that will be started in the next 3-4 years. These are huge projects, much more important than Musk proposal that in London would have been simply ridiculous given that the crossrail alone will move 200 million people per year. If they went for the proposal discussed here instead London congestion would have exploded given the abismally low capacity of this boring company project.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Getting to provide your own seats might just be what convinces drivers to use a subway system.
- puranjay 10y ago
  Isn't Musk's track record simply to shoot for the moon (or heck, Mars), then temper things down? He misses all his deadlines for precisely this reason. Right now, it's just a video mocked together over two days. It's just a very, very broad "idea". Things will change over time. Why knock something so early in the development phase?
mmanfrin 10y ago
If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. Like Hyperloop?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- idlewords 10y ago
  This is to subways like hyperloop is to high-speed rail. A stupid overelaboration of an existing, proven idea.
  - mmanfrin 10y ago
    Hyperloop is a 'stupid overelaboration of an existing, proven idea'? I was not aware we had so many proven 600mph high speed rails.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      They exist. The problem is getting approval to build them anywhere near residential areas is problematic. https://www.slashgear.com/japans-new-maglev-bullet-train-is-now-the-fastest-in-the-world-22380159/ https://www.slashgear.com/japans-new-maglev-bullet-train-is-... That's 600km/h. For 600mph you'd need Hyperloop to prove they can do that speed first.
      - ryanwaggoner 10y ago
        So...they don't exist. The fastest ones are actually 40% slower.
        astrodust 10y ago
        Show me a working 600mph tube train and then you'll have a case of a superior technology. Until then it's just an idea on a napkin. China is building new, high-speed maglev trains and there's many lines already open for business. Maybe one day Hyperloop will get built and will be open for passenger travel. When that day comes it's possible that surface rail may have already achieved the same speed because third or fourth generation maglev trains are in service.
9935c101ab17a66 10y ago
As a counter-point: do some research into Seattle's absolute disaster with tunnelling the last few years. Yes, there are some details of the situation that are specific to Seattle, but it just goes to show that even nowadays, tunnelling isn't as easy as we think it is.
monk_e_boy 10y ago
What? You could put trains on those tracks. I think it's neat. I like London, but it'd be sweet to have my car while I was there.
contravariant 10y ago
>But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Well, unless you count damage to whatever happens to be in the way of the tunnel and buildings on top of tunnel. This might be more of a problem in Europe than in the U.S. though.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Look at the Seattle viaduct replacement problem. Bertha came to a standstill for years due to engineers not taking care of a well pipe they thought they removed.
nostromo 10y ago
The video shows some sort of shuttle using the track. Those could be small busses or even public transport. http://imgur.com/a/Wv8YD http://imgur.com/a/Wv8YD In effect, this is a subway system. It's an underground rail system. The major difference is that you have a mixture of public and private passenger vehicles and smaller vehicles.
- gsnedders 10y ago
  But can you get a moving block signalling system such that they can follow each other with minimal separation? Until you can do that, a real train will always win at people/hour due to the fact that you can have more people per consist as ultimately the signalling challenges are comparable and you can therefore have comparable separation.
  - kolinko 10y ago
    With all my sympathy for metro - in many American cities it will never be good enough due to extensive suburbs. In places where land is cheap, and there are single family houses, cars will be the most efficient way to commute for years to come. We'll switch to self-driving electric cars, but still.
    - eli 10y ago
      Commuter rail is a thing. DC's metro goes a dozen miles outside the city in all directions and the MARC train goes further.
    - gsnedders 10y ago
      But ultimately you aren't going to have tunnels dug by the Boring Company out into the extensive suburbs either. The question ultimately becomes whether it makes sense to give up large amounts of space (even if underground) in the centre for parking (for everyone commuting from the suburbs), or give up space further out where land is cheaper and less dense for large car parks at stations. (Obviously there's a cost in changing mode of transport, but that somewhat applies to the pods too.)
CamperBob2 10y ago
edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc Well, which is it? Solved, or difficult/expensive/slow?
- zaphar 10y ago
  It's all four, They aren't mutually exclusive.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ShannonAlther 10y ago
> But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Depending on the specific location, there may very well be. Underground tunnels are vulnerable to earthquake-inflicted damage, for instance, and you would want to avoid repair as much as possible. Similarly, there may be environmental or conservatory reasons not to build tunnels, or reasons related to cost, or obstacles not yet encountered (that last one is less likely though).
- cbisnett 10y ago
  This is Elon's response to a Twitter users similar comment about earthquakes. I don't know enough about physics to say if he's just throwing things out there or if he already did some research. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/824300186834898945 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/824300186834898945
  - ShannonAlther 10y ago
    Mmm, so I spoke too soon on that front. In my defense, I've said this a lot to people who are advocates of Hyperloop construction (vacuum tubes are far too easily ruptured to be used in conjunction with transportation), but Musk is correct. Are subways targets for terrorism the same way that airports are?
    - baq 10y ago
      All public transportation is.
    - iraklism 10y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Just look at the Big Dig. One small mistake (using the wrong glue or fasteners) can put the safety of the entire safety into question.
bb88 10y ago
>Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. In the same way a road offers private and public transportation, a tunnel can do both. Why can't the car be a bus, say?
- Tiktaalik 10y ago
  Because cars, which are relatively wasteful spacewise, create negative externalities on the public transportation by causing congestion, which resultantly makes public transportation less efficient.
  - kolinko 10y ago
    Not an issue in automated underground systems really.
    - djsumdog 10y ago
      Yes it is. Cars don't even begin to match the capacity of trains. Look at London or Singapore where trains arrive less than a minute apart at peak hour. Many of London's trains are autonomous and all of Singapore trains are fully autonomous. There is no way individual cars could even come close to matching that kind of people-moving ability.
- hk__2 10y ago
  Because that’s hugely inefficient compared to a subway network. I live in Paris, France. 100% of its inhabitants have at least one of the 300+ subway stations under 1 km (0.6 miles) of their home. The subway system transports 5M people every single day. That’s twice the city population. That’s also 1.9B per year. During the peak hours you can have up to one train every 90 seconds for a capacity of 700 people each.
  - bb88 10y ago
    > Because that’s hugely inefficient compared to a subway network. I live in Paris, France. 100% of its inhabitants have at least one of the 300+ subway stations under 1 km (0.6 miles) of their home. That's actually pretty awesome, but you may have noticed that Americans don't really care about efficiency. Once the tunnel is built, you can put anything you want into it. But I suspect we would still choose cars over trains.
namlem 10y ago
I think the video was just to look flashy and show off the Model 3 design. I imagine most of the tunnel boring will be for mass transit.
phlakaton 10y ago
Reports I read on this a month or more ago suggested that yes, part of his goal is to improve the speed/cost of building tunnels, so that it's feasible to go build a whole bunch of them quickly. (That being said, building a bunch of tunnels in the bosom of San Andreas strikes me as hubris... But having lived in LA and its traffic for many years, I'm willing to be convinced. :-) )
leoh 10y ago
> If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. Agree, except that while many ridiculously wealthy people would be willing to help pay for private access to some tunnels — _perhaps_ subsidizing a system that is later available to others — many fewer wealthy people would help pay for a subway.
JusticeJuice 10y ago
Yeah, like you can't use the car transport floats without a car? Why?
whack 10y ago
You're asking the wrong question. There are over a hundred million Americans who commute long distances in their car. Mostly because they live/work in areas that aren't dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don't want to deal with transfers. You can lecture them all you want, but ultimately, these people aren't going to downgrade their lifestyle just to fit your ideas of engineering efficiency. The real question is: is this new solution more efficient than the current alternative of driving on the highway?
- melling 10y ago
  if you'd create 124mph transportation from 20-60 miles outside and through the city into the city, you wouldn't need to drive into the city. Most commuter trains average less than 50 so it's worth trying to drive. The average speed of the NYC subway is less than 35 mph. Light Rail? Low-speed maglev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY
  - rpedela 10y ago
    What about waiting time between transfers? You need a certain population density to have almost continuous trains. In Bay Area, you have to wait an hour between Caltrains unless it is rush hour. Caltrains could go 500mph, I would still drive to avoid the wait between trains.
    - floatingatoll 10y ago
      Demand for Caltrain is standing room only during rush hour, with 33% of traffic living in Palo Alto and working in SF. Caltrain has two primary constraints, neither population-linked: diesel trains accelerate badly, and freight track scheduling. Diesel trains are theoretically being swapped for electric, which will permit the trains to stop and start more efficiently. They predict one additional train during peak rush hour per day for this improvement, iirc. Freight traffic consumes a fixed amount of rail time, focused primarily on the "one hour between" segments of the schedule. Increasing frequency can only occur within existing scheduled route times, and cannot disrupt that freight traffic.
imron 10y ago
> tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow And now Musk is trying to solve for those three factors
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
theptip 10y ago
> tunnelling is a broadly solved problem As rockets were before Space X? It costs a billion dollars per mile to dig a subway tunnel. If the costs could be brought down, it would change a lot about the way we build mass transit systems.
- pnathan 10y ago
  If Elon can develop an massively more efficient boring system that the rest of the USA can use; fine, he can have his personal car-way network under his house while I ride around on the highly gridded subway network in Seattle or Austin or Boise. I won't grudge him that. Also, fwiw, I think cut and cover is a much better approach, despite the street level disruption. Ce la vie. The question is if he can drop those costs substantially. I certainly wish him the absolute best in doing so. But, if he's going to propose building transportation systems with huge operational costs (SOV tunnels), they had better be efficient in the cost per rider mile and competitive with other technologies.
- tigershark 10y ago
  What? Are you serious??? If it's true then in US you are getting ripped off big time. The whole crossrail project is 73 miles with 14 miles of tunnels and 40 station and it has a cost of 15B£ (19B$ with today exchange rate). I cannot find the total cost of the tunnels, but apparently for 1.25B£ you can have 18km of tunnels: http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/crossrail-awards-major-tunnelling-contracts-worth-125bn http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/crossrail-awards-ma... That is 1.6B$ for 11 miles. Basically an order of magnitude less than your figure of 1B$ per mile. If really Musk wants to improve by an order of magnitude over that figure then he is late, the crossrail tunnel have been completed 2 years ago.
  - theptip 10y ago
    Those Crossrail numbers give $0.2B/mile, including a lot of miles of track that aren't tunnels. After digging a bit I found this, which is a good summary: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r... It seems that $1B/__km__ (not mile, you're right) is sadly par for the course in the US, and Crossrail passes that threshold too. Projects elsewhere are below that threshold though.
dingo_bat 10y ago
> If he's looking for mega-good I doubt it. I think he's looking for the same thing as everybody else: mega profits.
- jaimex2 10y ago
  why not both?
- spectrum1234 10y ago
  Yes Musk only works for the $$$
theWatcher37 10y ago
Except the monoculture here doesn't account for just how terrible buses and trains are. Mass transit is fundamentally superior and realistically inferior. The second any rational actor has the economic advantage necessary to not ride in a box packed with people of questionable hygiene they'll chose option #2 no matter the negative externalities. I love this place but people aren't packets in your stream, they actively decide against your well designed "optimal" systems and opt for less efficient "luxurious" options as soon as they possibly can.
- pnathan 10y ago
  > The second any rational actor has the economic advantage necessary to not ride in a box packed with people of questionable hygiene they'll chose option #2 no matter the negative externalities. :: raises hand :: I can easily afford to drive and park. I bus to work instead. No time difference. A number of people are like me. (the fact that buses allow people who aren't very well house trained on board is a matter that needs to be addressed, no question about it)
- zmmmmm 10y ago
  Have you ever ridden on a really good train system? I get the train to work each day and 99% of the time I get to sit down with space to comfortably work on my laptop and I get through a bunch of stuff each way. When I think of the alternative - spending 20% less time but dealing with the risk and frustration of driving and getting nothing done in return - driving myself seems positively toxic.
- Noos 10y ago
  It's not even hygiene. When you ride a train, you cede control of your life to it: you have to plan things by schedule, if it's delayed you are delayed, and you don't even have the luxury of silence. people don't usually vote to let other people have immediate control of their lives like that. There seems to be this weird thing where people are embracing things that strip autonomy from them.
- Operyl 10y ago
  I mean, where I lived I _tried_ to use public transit. But with a 50/50 chance of getting passed by the single bus running that route, it just wasn't making sense anymore. And that route ran every 60 minutes .. and also didn't run on Sunday's.
elihu 10y ago
Cars and mass transit both have major problems. Cars aren't scalable, and mass transit is often slow when you have to wait for trains/buses to come. (It's worse when you have to change buses or trains.) The video looks more like a high-speed form of personal rapid transit [1], which is a sort of hybrid system that tries to achieve the best of both. It's like a bus or train system, except the vehicles are smaller and don't operate on a timetable. Instead, they pick you up when and where you want and they take you where you want to go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit

by pnathan 10y ago

naravara 10y ago

Hilariously so even. This is basically a subway system, except you have to provide your own seats. All this is succeeding in doing is making Musk look hilariously out of touch.

wcr3 10y ago
hilariously.
stupidcar 10y ago
He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical. On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and engineers with real knowledge and influence in this field, I'm astonished by the total lack of vision. Even in London, where you have a major, successful transport engineering project (Crossrail) completing, and an entire city dependency on, and supportive of, public transport, you only hear the most anemic plans for future expansion. For example, TFL is pushing a "New Tube For London" plan that consists of little more than trivial improvements. Some new trains, platform edge doors, etc., scheduled to be delivered in 2050 or so. But absolutely nothing with real ambition, like entirely new lines, that would actually solve London's insane congestion problems.
- astrange 10y ago
  Opening new lines, like building new roads, might hurt everything due to induced demand. You can reduce demand by not needing everyone to go the same place every day. Why does everyone have to work in London and why don't they already live where they work?
  - Robotbeat 10y ago
    Induced demand means people are now able to practically get places when they couldn't before. It doesn't mean "hurt everything."
    - roywiggins 10y ago
      And more people moving more places means more growth, probably. If everyone stayed at home not much would get done.
- osdiab 10y ago
  The problem is not that they cannot imagine the concept of adding new lines, it's just that the costs, both monetarily and politically for doing so, are enormous in the Western world. The eminent domain, permitting, and labor issues around these things paralyzes the development of cities, especially in the United States. If you want to see ambition in infrastructure, check out China. Being a technocracy bent on having world-class infrastructure, combined with the ability to remove people from their homes for the greater good with little repercussion, they've built some of the most thorough infrastructural improvements ever seen on the planet. For instance, the first line of the Shanghai Metro was opened in 1993; today, it is the longest metro in the world, with 14 lines. And this rapid growth can be seen not just in the megacities like Shanghai, but in countless smaller ones throughout the country—not to mention their incredible construction of their thorough long distance high speed rail network. And on top of that, since their system is so modern, the trains are a hell of a lot safer and more reliable than any piece of infrastructure in the USA. I think they've made mistakes with how car-oriented the streetscapes are, the generic architectural styles throughout that country, overbuilding before demand arises, and a lack of mixed-use neighborhood zoning, amongst other things; but when it comes to imagining an integrated, efficient commuter rail network, they've killed it.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    > the ability to remove people from their homes for the greater good with little repercussion I think you underestimate how poorly compensated the relocated people are. Unless it's an outcome of "Weird China" reporting, which is very possible, I've seen plenty of reports of people being forced out of their houses in exchange for flats with smaller floor space and property in an inferior location. I'm not saying what Chinese infrastructure officials isn't impressive. I'm just saying it has massive costs for the people being displaced.
    - EmployedRussian 10y ago
      I think you are in violent agreement with the parent post: "ability to remove people ... with little repercussion" literally means: they (authorities) can order people move, and it costs them (authorities) little or nothing at all. It costs the moved people a great deal, but the government doesn't care.
- pnathan 10y ago
  paralysis via NIMBY is the key problem in the US. many urbanists would be happy to grid every city with subways. we talk about it, wistfully. but we don't have the political leverage today, and the little we have is with the Democrats, not the Republicans.
- 6d6b73 10y ago
  "real solution" =! "it's impractical" Decide which one is it.
- Anechoic 10y ago
  > He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical. He's proposing the transportation equivalent of a personal computer with perfect security, completely crash free, 1000x faster than current PCs that cost lesss tha. We have today. It's not impractical, it's laughable. > On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and engineers with real knowledge and influence in this field, I'm astonished by the total lack of vision. If you want to see total vision, come to a Transportation Research Board annual meeting. Or an APTA annual meeting. Visions are out there. The political support is not.
  - dirtyaura 10y ago
    Visions have to be shared with the public, make people excited about them, to get politicians to support them
- tigershark 10y ago
  What? TfL has no ambitions? The crossrail is the biggest construction project in the whole Europe, and it is still not finished and they are already planning for the crossrail 2 that will be started in the next 3-4 years. These are huge projects, much more important than Musk proposal that in London would have been simply ridiculous given that the crossrail alone will move 200 million people per year. If they went for the proposal discussed here instead London congestion would have exploded given the abismally low capacity of this boring company project.
closeparen 10y ago
Getting to provide your own seats might just be what convinces drivers to use a subway system.
puranjay 10y ago
Isn't Musk's track record simply to shoot for the moon (or heck, Mars), then temper things down? He misses all his deadlines for precisely this reason. Right now, it's just a video mocked together over two days. It's just a very, very broad "idea". Things will change over time. Why knock something so early in the development phase?

mmanfrin 10y ago

If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. Like Hyperloop?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
idlewords 10y ago
This is to subways like hyperloop is to high-speed rail. A stupid overelaboration of an existing, proven idea.
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  Hyperloop is a 'stupid overelaboration of an existing, proven idea'? I was not aware we had so many proven 600mph high speed rails.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    They exist. The problem is getting approval to build them anywhere near residential areas is problematic. https://www.slashgear.com/japans-new-maglev-bullet-train-is-now-the-fastest-in-the-world-22380159/ https://www.slashgear.com/japans-new-maglev-bullet-train-is-... That's 600km/h. For 600mph you'd need Hyperloop to prove they can do that speed first.
    - ryanwaggoner 10y ago
      So...they don't exist. The fastest ones are actually 40% slower.
      - astrodust 10y ago
        Show me a working 600mph tube train and then you'll have a case of a superior technology. Until then it's just an idea on a napkin. China is building new, high-speed maglev trains and there's many lines already open for business. Maybe one day Hyperloop will get built and will be open for passenger travel. When that day comes it's possible that surface rail may have already achieved the same speed because third or fourth generation maglev trains are in service.

9935c101ab17a66 10y ago

As a counter-point: do some research into Seattle's absolute disaster with tunnelling the last few years. Yes, there are some details of the situation that are specific to Seattle, but it just goes to show that even nowadays, tunnelling isn't as easy as we think it is.

monk_e_boy 10y ago

What? You could put trains on those tracks. I think it's neat. I like London, but it'd be sweet to have my car while I was there.

contravariant 10y ago

>But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Well, unless you count damage to whatever happens to be in the way of the tunnel and buildings on top of tunnel. This might be more of a problem in Europe than in the U.S. though.

djsumdog 10y ago
Look at the Seattle viaduct replacement problem. Bertha came to a standstill for years due to engineers not taking care of a well pipe they thought they removed.

nostromo 10y ago

The video shows some sort of shuttle using the track. Those could be small busses or even public transport. http://imgur.com/a/Wv8YD http://imgur.com/a/Wv8YD In effect, this is a subway system. It's an underground rail system. The major difference is that you have a mixture of public and private passenger vehicles and smaller vehicles.

gsnedders 10y ago
But can you get a moving block signalling system such that they can follow each other with minimal separation? Until you can do that, a real train will always win at people/hour due to the fact that you can have more people per consist as ultimately the signalling challenges are comparable and you can therefore have comparable separation.
- kolinko 10y ago
  With all my sympathy for metro - in many American cities it will never be good enough due to extensive suburbs. In places where land is cheap, and there are single family houses, cars will be the most efficient way to commute for years to come. We'll switch to self-driving electric cars, but still.
  - eli 10y ago
    Commuter rail is a thing. DC's metro goes a dozen miles outside the city in all directions and the MARC train goes further.
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    But ultimately you aren't going to have tunnels dug by the Boring Company out into the extensive suburbs either. The question ultimately becomes whether it makes sense to give up large amounts of space (even if underground) in the centre for parking (for everyone commuting from the suburbs), or give up space further out where land is cheaper and less dense for large car parks at stations. (Obviously there's a cost in changing mode of transport, but that somewhat applies to the pods too.)

CamperBob2 10y ago

edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc Well, which is it? Solved, or difficult/expensive/slow?

zaphar 10y ago
It's all four, They aren't mutually exclusive.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ShannonAlther 10y ago

> But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Depending on the specific location, there may very well be. Underground tunnels are vulnerable to earthquake-inflicted damage, for instance, and you would want to avoid repair as much as possible. Similarly, there may be environmental or conservatory reasons not to build tunnels, or reasons related to cost, or obstacles not yet encountered (that last one is less likely though).

cbisnett 10y ago
This is Elon's response to a Twitter users similar comment about earthquakes. I don't know enough about physics to say if he's just throwing things out there or if he already did some research. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/824300186834898945 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/824300186834898945
- ShannonAlther 10y ago
  Mmm, so I spoke too soon on that front. In my defense, I've said this a lot to people who are advocates of Hyperloop construction (vacuum tubes are far too easily ruptured to be used in conjunction with transportation), but Musk is correct. Are subways targets for terrorism the same way that airports are?
  - baq 10y ago
    All public transportation is.
  - iraklism 10y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
djsumdog 10y ago
Just look at the Big Dig. One small mistake (using the wrong glue or fasteners) can put the safety of the entire safety into question.

bb88 10y ago

>Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. In the same way a road offers private and public transportation, a tunnel can do both. Why can't the car be a bus, say?

Tiktaalik 10y ago
Because cars, which are relatively wasteful spacewise, create negative externalities on the public transportation by causing congestion, which resultantly makes public transportation less efficient.
- kolinko 10y ago
  Not an issue in automated underground systems really.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    Yes it is. Cars don't even begin to match the capacity of trains. Look at London or Singapore where trains arrive less than a minute apart at peak hour. Many of London's trains are autonomous and all of Singapore trains are fully autonomous. There is no way individual cars could even come close to matching that kind of people-moving ability.
hk__2 10y ago
Because that’s hugely inefficient compared to a subway network. I live in Paris, France. 100% of its inhabitants have at least one of the 300+ subway stations under 1 km (0.6 miles) of their home. The subway system transports 5M people every single day. That’s twice the city population. That’s also 1.9B per year. During the peak hours you can have up to one train every 90 seconds for a capacity of 700 people each.
- bb88 10y ago
  > Because that’s hugely inefficient compared to a subway network. I live in Paris, France. 100% of its inhabitants have at least one of the 300+ subway stations under 1 km (0.6 miles) of their home. That's actually pretty awesome, but you may have noticed that Americans don't really care about efficiency. Once the tunnel is built, you can put anything you want into it. But I suspect we would still choose cars over trains.

namlem 10y ago

I think the video was just to look flashy and show off the Model 3 design. I imagine most of the tunnel boring will be for mass transit.

phlakaton 10y ago

Reports I read on this a month or more ago suggested that yes, part of his goal is to improve the speed/cost of building tunnels, so that it's feasible to go build a whole bunch of them quickly. (That being said, building a bunch of tunnels in the bosom of San Andreas strikes me as hubris... But having lived in LA and its traffic for many years, I'm willing to be convinced. :-) )

leoh 10y ago

> If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. Agree, except that while many ridiculously wealthy people would be willing to help pay for private access to some tunnels — _perhaps_ subsidizing a system that is later available to others — many fewer wealthy people would help pay for a subway.

JusticeJuice 10y ago

Yeah, like you can't use the car transport floats without a car? Why?

whack 10y ago

You're asking the wrong question. There are over a hundred million Americans who commute long distances in their car. Mostly because they live/work in areas that aren't dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don't want to deal with transfers. You can lecture them all you want, but ultimately, these people aren't going to downgrade their lifestyle just to fit your ideas of engineering efficiency. The real question is: is this new solution more efficient than the current alternative of driving on the highway?

melling 10y ago
if you'd create 124mph transportation from 20-60 miles outside and through the city into the city, you wouldn't need to drive into the city. Most commuter trains average less than 50 so it's worth trying to drive. The average speed of the NYC subway is less than 35 mph. Light Rail? Low-speed maglev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY
- rpedela 10y ago
  What about waiting time between transfers? You need a certain population density to have almost continuous trains. In Bay Area, you have to wait an hour between Caltrains unless it is rush hour. Caltrains could go 500mph, I would still drive to avoid the wait between trains.
  - floatingatoll 10y ago
    Demand for Caltrain is standing room only during rush hour, with 33% of traffic living in Palo Alto and working in SF. Caltrain has two primary constraints, neither population-linked: diesel trains accelerate badly, and freight track scheduling. Diesel trains are theoretically being swapped for electric, which will permit the trains to stop and start more efficiently. They predict one additional train during peak rush hour per day for this improvement, iirc. Freight traffic consumes a fixed amount of rail time, focused primarily on the "one hour between" segments of the schedule. Increasing frequency can only occur within existing scheduled route times, and cannot disrupt that freight traffic.

imron 10y ago

> tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow And now Musk is trying to solve for those three factors

deleted 10y ago

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theptip 10y ago

> tunnelling is a broadly solved problem As rockets were before Space X? It costs a billion dollars per mile to dig a subway tunnel. If the costs could be brought down, it would change a lot about the way we build mass transit systems.

pnathan 10y ago
If Elon can develop an massively more efficient boring system that the rest of the USA can use; fine, he can have his personal car-way network under his house while I ride around on the highly gridded subway network in Seattle or Austin or Boise. I won't grudge him that. Also, fwiw, I think cut and cover is a much better approach, despite the street level disruption. Ce la vie. The question is if he can drop those costs substantially. I certainly wish him the absolute best in doing so. But, if he's going to propose building transportation systems with huge operational costs (SOV tunnels), they had better be efficient in the cost per rider mile and competitive with other technologies.
tigershark 10y ago
What? Are you serious??? If it's true then in US you are getting ripped off big time. The whole crossrail project is 73 miles with 14 miles of tunnels and 40 station and it has a cost of 15B£ (19B$ with today exchange rate). I cannot find the total cost of the tunnels, but apparently for 1.25B£ you can have 18km of tunnels: http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/crossrail-awards-major-tunnelling-contracts-worth-125bn http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/crossrail-awards-ma... That is 1.6B$ for 11 miles. Basically an order of magnitude less than your figure of 1B$ per mile. If really Musk wants to improve by an order of magnitude over that figure then he is late, the crossrail tunnel have been completed 2 years ago.
- theptip 10y ago
  Those Crossrail numbers give $0.2B/mile, including a lot of miles of track that aren't tunnels. After digging a bit I found this, which is a good summary: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r... It seems that $1B/__km__ (not mile, you're right) is sadly par for the course in the US, and Crossrail passes that threshold too. Projects elsewhere are below that threshold though.

dingo_bat 10y ago

> If he's looking for mega-good I doubt it. I think he's looking for the same thing as everybody else: mega profits.

jaimex2 10y ago
why not both?
spectrum1234 10y ago
Yes Musk only works for the $$$

theWatcher37 10y ago

Except the monoculture here doesn't account for just how terrible buses and trains are. Mass transit is fundamentally superior and realistically inferior. The second any rational actor has the economic advantage necessary to not ride in a box packed with people of questionable hygiene they'll chose option #2 no matter the negative externalities. I love this place but people aren't packets in your stream, they actively decide against your well designed "optimal" systems and opt for less efficient "luxurious" options as soon as they possibly can.

pnathan 10y ago
> The second any rational actor has the economic advantage necessary to not ride in a box packed with people of questionable hygiene they'll chose option #2 no matter the negative externalities. :: raises hand :: I can easily afford to drive and park. I bus to work instead. No time difference. A number of people are like me. (the fact that buses allow people who aren't very well house trained on board is a matter that needs to be addressed, no question about it)
zmmmmm 10y ago
Have you ever ridden on a really good train system? I get the train to work each day and 99% of the time I get to sit down with space to comfortably work on my laptop and I get through a bunch of stuff each way. When I think of the alternative - spending 20% less time but dealing with the risk and frustration of driving and getting nothing done in return - driving myself seems positively toxic.
Noos 10y ago
It's not even hygiene. When you ride a train, you cede control of your life to it: you have to plan things by schedule, if it's delayed you are delayed, and you don't even have the luxury of silence. people don't usually vote to let other people have immediate control of their lives like that. There seems to be this weird thing where people are embracing things that strip autonomy from them.
Operyl 10y ago
I mean, where I lived I _tried_ to use public transit. But with a 50/50 chance of getting passed by the single bus running that route, it just wasn't making sense anymore. And that route ran every 60 minutes .. and also didn't run on Sunday's.

elihu 10y ago

Cars and mass transit both have major problems. Cars aren't scalable, and mass transit is often slow when you have to wait for trains/buses to come. (It's worse when you have to change buses or trains.) The video looks more like a high-speed form of personal rapid transit [1], which is a sort of hybrid system that tries to achieve the best of both. It's like a bus or train system, except the vehicles are smaller and don't operate on a timetable. Instead, they pick you up when and where you want and they take you where you want to go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit